“An African from Toronto” news clipping from the Toronto Telegram, January 4, 1968.
Theme: Artist - Ola Skanks
Date: January 4, 1968
Type: Newspaper Clipping
Name: “An African from Toronto” in The Telegram (Toronto)
Originating Collection: On loan from the personal collection of Ola Skanks
An African from Toronto
by Sean Brown
Rochester, N.Y.
Black is beautiful. Even if it’s yellow or green or blue it can still be beautiful. And that makes it black.
Negro is out. Black is in. Black, that is, without shape. Because black is beautiful.
That’s the word in the ghetto. It’s the black ghetto now. Not the Negro ghetto. Negro was white man’s talk.
Ola Skenks is black. She’s a black beauty. She’s that big leggy dancer from Africa. The one who danced for the kids at the high school.
What she come here for? To teach the kids. Teach them about Africa, that’s what. All about the heritage of the black man. About pride in the black race. That’s what she come for.
As an African, Ola Skenks was a phony. Her home address wasn’t Accra, Johannesburg or Nairobi. It was Eglinton Ave. West, Toronto.
but the 1,200 students who watched her dance in the auditorium of West High School one day recently didn’t know that. Not until they Swarmed around her backstage and began to ask questions. They wanted to know about Africa. But she couldn’t tell them. In private life, she’s a Toronto housewife with four daughters. And she’s never been able to stretch the household budget to include an African safari.
All she could give them — in the flowing, full-length Yoruba gown and Swahili grass skirt she made herself — was the spirit and the pride of Africa. And that was all she had been asked to bring.